08:21 pm - Melted Cheese Balls for charitySome of you might remember a while ago when my mom showed me a recipe I'd written when I was five years old for a delicacy called "Melted Cheese Balls". In case you forgot or never heard of it, here is the recipe for your perusal. A transcription is below.

I included the vanilla because when we made cookies, every recipe called for vanilla. So naturally it's a must in every situation.

I recently posted this in a Something Awful forums thread about unfortunate culinary moments, which is mostly concerned with boggling at the hideous abominations that the likes of Paula Deen, Sandra Lee, Simply Sara and those two crazy sisters in Texas have concocted in their feverish imaginations. Surely a five-year-old could do the same, and apparently he did.

I should mention we never did try to make the Melted Cheese Balls, which probably was a good thing in hindsight. However, after posting in the culinary thread, someone replied and said he was planning on actually trying the recipe and would put the results up on YouTube. You cannot begin to imagine the simultaneous feelings of incredulous mirth and horrified foreboding that ran through me. Yes, I love it when puppets dance for my amusement, but good god! Surely he has so much to live for!

So I told him that if he makes the recipe and it turns out to be vaguely edible and he can manage to eat some without gagging, I'll donate $50 to the charity of his choice for the Japanese relief effort. There's a kind of a charity challenge thing going on in the forums as well, you see. Over $50,000 has been donated to the likes of the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and such. (Yes, the organizations won't earmark the donations specifically for Japan, but they need financial help just the same.)

One poster said he'd donate $50, up to $750, for each person who shaved their head for the cause and posted proof. As of last count he'd reached his limit and moved it up to $1000 so more people could join in. There's now a lot of bald folks on the forums, including a married couple. I am not made of such money but I'll help as much as I can and besides, this is much cheaper than paying for the fellow's emergency room visit. I'd already donated in the thread for a collective challenge, so I figured this'll be a fun extra game. And I'll donate even if the guy can't manage a bite because I have to admire him for trying.

My sweetie was reading me some of the posts on SA of people offering to donate x amount if certain douchebag users got permabanned. With that, and a lot of the other culinary threads, I think I know what my birthday gift to myself is gonna be.

when I was 5ish, my recipe was dark corn syrup, peanut butter, chocolate chips, all rolled in crushed corn flakes and served, hors d'oeuvre-like, on swizzle sticks, because I had an extensive collection of them (my parents used to make me happy by bringing them back from 70s tiki lounges when they went out).

when I was 5 I thought it would be AMAZING to have made a recipe. that just seemed like it was awesome.

Considering the mixology thing of the past year, I don't seem to think i've changed much in 35 years, which is heartening.

I don't remember having any problems with the way the letters faced, so I could not set up the typical kiddie L3MONADE ZTAND. I was a phonetic reader, though, which meant I said words like "epi-tome" and "guh-naw".

I'm wondering who taught me to write a 1 like that. I can't ever remember writing it with the bottom serif. In fact, I remember an early school lesson in horrible rhyme which went "Draw a line down and there! You're done! Isn't it easy to make a 1?"